The Importance of Hitting Bricks, not Pads(for Self Defense and Martial Arts and why nobody does this anymore)

Accompanying video
There used to be a time, back in the good old days, where traditional karate and kung fu schools would have their students be conservative with the closed fist punches in the sense that you didn’t see…

2) Boxing and sporting type punches thrown at PADS, heavy-bags, sparing w/ a partner etc. all WHILE WEARING GLOVES and HANDWRAPS(there’s so many self-defense systems that are guilty of this, it’s hard for me to simply choose one video off of Youtube…)

AND

3) This slow motion non-sense that Target Focus Training uses. Sure, on a willing (dance) partner, every strike will hit with pinpoint accuracy a SOFT target that of YOUR CHOOSING, but let’s GET REAL when you’re being attacked and going full speed and your life is on the line, you WILL MISS, and you will MISS A LOT. YOU, ME, and everyone else.

Stop. Enough of this non-sense. Back than, you were to practice a reverse punches on a makiwara (Module 6) and a BRICK about 1,000 times a day (yes, several THOUSAND, that’s not’s a typo) and even than STILL, the reverse punch was recommended to be thrown to the BODY and a lot of systems advised against punching the head. And after about a decade or two, not only would you basically stop feeling “pain” in general, you would be able to throw a brutal, vicious reverse punch that COULD DEFINITELY take someone’s head off their shoulders.

BUT, especially when you factor in the fact that warriors to soldiers would be wearing helmets and armor out on the battlefield, it really didn’t make a lot of sense to be teaching punching as a PRIMARY method of self-defense. Also, keep in mind that there was a CULTURE about the TIME spent developing the reverse punch as a means of developing MENTAL TOUGHNESS(something that’s lacking in a lot of the pussified modern “men” of today, and it was more about the JOURNEY than the end result. So if that type of thing appeals to you(congrats, you’re one amongst VERY FEW people, check out the makiwara training in Module 6 of the SDTS.)

But the reason the liberal McDojos don’t do all this is simple…

Follow the money.

When your selling memberships like fitness centers/gyms do, you actually want your students to be getting in their cars and driving on down and coming back week after week, month after month, year after year to your studio. It’s very simple, students (customers) don’t like to hit their hands on hard things. It hurts, it’s not comfortable, and people would much rather hit air and pads because it’s more “fun” and they “feel it more” in that they get a “much better cardio workout at their target heart rate” or some other liberal BS like that. It’s simply a matter of meeting consumer demand and “please, everybody knows that calluses are so not attractive.”

And to that, I say, as someone who’s sincerely and honestly concerned for you and your family’s safety and well-being, you should learn to be using TOOLS and TECHNOLOGY(pepper spray, personal alarms, tactical flashlights- see my youtube video here) to ESCAPE as Damian Ross will teach you in the drills found in 60 Minute Self Defense and to disregard the FANTASY being sold to you of being able to CONQUER your assailant.

“But, nobody wears helmets and armor today. And yeah just the other day I punched this guy and KNOCKED him the F#CK out, blah, blah, blah…”

And while I’m not the type of guy that likes to criticize something that “worked,” if we’re going to look at what’s optimal/ideal/ the BEST SELF DEFENSE for the AVERAGE person, it’s heel of hand/palm strike and edge of hand. Plus, just think about how much MORE effective your punch would be with the added MASS/ WEIGHT and STRUCTURE if you used a roll of quarters(see my youtube video here) or SAP gloves(Module 11).

So now that you know this, there’s two choices you can make.

1) You can choose to disregard the unpleasant reality brought up in this video/article, maybe leave an insulting and derogatory comment to make yourself feel better about yourself and this unpleasant reality, and go back to “your system” where you will continue to hit JUST pads and to train with HAND-WRAPS and GLOVES and to continue to live in your make-believe, fantasy world that your hands are actually the WEAPONS of mass destruction you want to PRETEND them to be…

OR

2) You can drive on down to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a brick, some heavy-duty sandpaper, and get to work TODAY. Now the first time you hit your brick wrapped in sand paper, let me tell you something, it will be uncomfortable and it will be humbling. There will be pain. There is likely to be bleeding. But just like anything in life worth having, over TIME, you will forge your hands into something you can actually USE to save your life. Some methods faster than others(again, edge of hand, heel of hand), some methods a little or a lot slower than others(elbows, reverse punch, etc.)

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This whole concept goes back to the idea that people want to do what is easiest, least painful/difficult, and the most fun. And these traditional martial arts or mma or boxing classes provide that. Until I discovered the SDTS I would have thought the mere idea of hitting something hard like bricks especially with no hand wraps or gloves was stupid. But the point is you have to condition your hands to perform whatever function that you wish them to perform. If you want to condition your hands to be lethal weapons and just as effective a striking surface as a steel pipe then you have to put in the time, hard work, dedication to do that. It’s obvious that some weak ass pencil pusher’s hand isn’t gonna have much more effect as a striking weapon in a real fight than a school girl’s and will be more of a liability than a resource because the probability of damaging your own hand in a fight and rendering it useless will be high unless you have adequately conditioned yourself. Hitting things like pads, bags, or even dummies are better than just striking air like many of your traditional karate classes but that alone may condition your hands for striking soft target areas like the throat or neck or solar plexus but not hard areas like the skull or jaw or even softer areas covered by heavy clothing. And in mma and boxing when you train and spar your hands are protected by gloves or hand wraps which you will most likely not be wearing in a real fight and performing those same punches that may get you knockouts and wins in your sport may fracture your knuckles and screw you up in a real fight. Even traditional martial artists like Mas Oyama and Bruce Lee believed it necessary to harden and condition the surfaces of your body you would be striking with(Bruce Lee conditioned his hands by driving them into gravel). The point is if you can build up the confidence and strength to be able to hit a brick with everything you have and it not hurt you then you will have no difficulty in delivering that devastating one hit KO to your assailant when the time comes when you need to do so to save your ass someday. Plus calloused hands will make any kind of other manual labor or exercise you do be much easier and less painful, and despite what many think most chicks at least the ones around here love them some strong calloused male hands holding them :)!

Agreed. And, oh I forgot to mention, it’s important to not “pick at” and try to tear off the calluses, I know it doesn’t hurt most of the time, but just the other day I tore one and ended up with a cut in my hand and a little bleeding and it was a detriment to training. So yeah, resist the temptation to just rip it off haha

NO. Hitting bricks, both hitting and hitting yourself with sticks and stones haha, is what various warriors such as the Shaolin monks have done for centuries to build mental and psychological toughness AS WELL AS, obviously PHYSICAL TOUGHNESS, you kill 2 birds with one stone which was the goal of Module 6 of the Self Defense Training System. However, like Damian Ross said on Penn and Teller’s episode on Martial Arts, “I don’t beleive in chi.” “You gotta hit something, you gotta hit it hard, you got to go full bore.” The meditation stuff is optional and extra, if you like it and feel it’s worth the time, do it. Preferably do it while you are training and visualize yourself or a loved one being brutally attacked. But we train people to focus on the hard, external, PHYSICAL stuff FIRST as that’s a priority if they’re going to be able to PHYSICALLY execute the skills needed to save their lives the lives of their loved ones on the street.

Hi killer . I agree with most of your stuff. I dont believe slow motion training should be bashed though. Fast builds stamina muscles and whatever but low speed lays down neurological patterns and an understanding of the process.That is proven. When i learned classical guitar i was told to practice at a quarter of the speed required to play the piece. My brother on the other hand practiced normal speed as it ought to be played. He had your argument. I was the geek and followed the teacher. When in class we were told to play at normal speed, my brother was making so many mistakes whereas I on the other hand with very little speed practice could execute it flawlessly and at an even higher speed than him despite almost no speed training. I was taken aback when i saw the results of this especially since my brother is a much more talented musician than i am. I am sure there are numerous other skills where people can vouch for slow training. Even in Systema the guys train at slow speed. And i dont think anyone will tell those russian guys they dont know what theyre doing. So in defence of both, there is a role for both. I suggest do first half of training at slow speeds to develop the skill balanceand feel for it and finish off at high speed. You will get more value out of this. As for the bricks, there is no room for slow. Hit it hard.

I’m not bashing slow training, I’m specifically bashing the Target Focus Training free fighting which has also uses the crawl, stand, walk, run, sprint analogy or line of thinking. The thing is, the core skills we’re training are gross motor, large body, movements(edge of hand, chin jab, knees, stomps) and are so simple(unlike playing a guitar) that you can start with run and finish with sprint and go back to walk every now and than when you FEEL like you need it. THIS is what a self defense system SHOULD be. Systema, on the other hand, like the guitar, is vastly more complicated(uses fine motor movements) and is not a system of self defense. It was basically developed for the Russian military which at that time was very well trained, and not to mention very well fed, to deal with the rowdy, underfed, untrained masses. The core of the SDTS, WW2 Combatives, on the other hand was developed by Fairbairn to deal with the highly dangerous organized crime gangs of 1920’s Shanghai and passed on to Applegate in WW2 to kill the Nazis and Japanese whom had never seen anything so SIMPLY brutal in a hand-to-hand combat system. “English Gangster Methods” Haha